Tuesday, 18 October 2022 | PNS | DEHRADUN
Dehradun police arrested two men for swindling money from the bank accounts of locals visiting ATMs on the pretext of helping them by swapping their cards. Addressing the media on Monday, the senior superintendent of police (SSP) Daleep Singh Kunwar said that three complainants from the Raipur area registered three separate complaints about their ATMs being swapped by two men. According to them, they went to withdraw money from an ATM on October 14 but were having some difficulty using the ATM card. Two unknown men on the pretext of helping them asked for their cards and password and later gave them a counterfeit card of the same bank swapping it with the original one.
The SSP said that the complainants did not notice the counterfeit cards until they reached home or got a message that money was withdrawn from their bank accounts. He said that the accused withdrew Rs 15,000 from the account of the first complainant, Rs 19,500 from the account of the second complainant and Rs 70,000 from the third complainant. Investigating the matter, the police checked 44 CCTV footage installed near the sites of the incidents and got pictures of the suspects. The police also found the car used by the accused to move around the Raipur area through CCTV footage. The police finally nabbed the two accused from Thano Road on Sunday. The police found out during the investigation that three men were actually involved in this fraud and one is still absconding, as per the SSP.
The accused Sunil Mehra (25) who belongs to Tehri was currently living at Patelnagar in Dehradun and Sauhadra alias Munna (29) is a resident of Haryana. The absconding accused Imma is also a native of Haryana. The SSP said that the accused revealed during questioning that they targeted mostly women and senior citizens who seem to have trouble using ATM cards for money withdrawal. They said that they used to scout several ATM booths in an area to find vulnerable targets.
The accused Imma and Sauhadra used to go inside the booth and asked for a password on the pretext of helping them and then used to swap their cards with the fake ones while the third accomplice used to keep a watch outside. Subsequently, they used to withdraw money from another nearby ATM. The SSP informed that 10 cases are already registered against Sauhadra in Haryana, Dehradun and Rishikesh while four cases are registered against Mehra. The police recovered a car, a total of 61 ATM cards, Rs 30,000 cash and have frozen Rs 30,000 in the bank account of the accused.
